A spot of refurbishment

It's project time here, folks. Not a huge one, but a project nonetheless.

Over the Christmas period my cousin - who is now getting married - was clearing out all of the stuff he'd left at his mothers for the last decade or so. Uncovered were a treasure trove of his (and, interestingly a lot of my father's) childhood toys, books and boxes. One unexpected discovery was a barely-used C.A.M.P Zephyr 25.5" (65cm for those of a metric disposition) walking ice axe that a friend of my cousin's had left at his house forever ago. This was just as I was beginning my current obsession with mountaineering so not knowing a huge amount (and not one to look a gift horse in the mouth) I took it for myself.

When I got it back to my flat having left it at home, I got a better look at it and discovered it was a little bit worse for wear for its decade-long stay in a cold garage. There were several problems:

1. The (overly large) grip was pitted and the rubber perished - if I tried to use it to hack into ice it would probably come away in my hand. It had to go and a replacement sourced.

2. The pick itself whilst mainly in decent shape had patches of rust on them. Whilst not a major issue, it's ugly and some rust leads to more rust so this had to go.

3. The metal shaft isn't the grippiest. Despite the fact I doubt I'll often have to use it holding it by the shaft, if I did I'd want something more comfortable and grippier than plain metal.

So, on a quiet Friday afternoon after university I sourced the bits I needed and set to work. First things first was to strip off the perished rubber grip, which was achieved scarily easily - I was instantly vindicated in my ideas. There was some glue still on there so I washed the entire thing, dried it off and grabbed the electrical tape and started wrapping.

Before, with perished rubber grip, plain shaft and rusty pick

After, re-wrapped in fetching yellow tape with no rust!

After about 3 layers and one and a half rolls of yellow electrical tape I had a decent thick covering on the shaft of the pick, as well as a wrap of green to make sure no one nicks it (not that it looks all that expensive, but hey, it's mine, so...). I also wrapped the pick protector in tape otherwise it's rather difficult to see if the cover is on when you're anything more than an arm's length away.

Next job was to remove the rust spots from the pick and axe head - this required a little more finesse. Or, to put it more accurately, taking a flat-head screwdriver and scraping away the rust spots 'till the thing looked a little less brown and a little more shiny.

It still needs a little bit of work, and possibly a new grip (I'm undecided as to whether I need it yet) but for a relatively old axe, the little bit of love has done it some good and will see it used for a little longer!